The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns eBook

but nevertheless he had his remedy against evil-doers.
He would take what they paid him for rent and refuse
to mark it as rent, appropriating it to his loans,
so that the fear of bailiffs was upon them again.
Thus, as the good genius of Chapel Alley and Carpenter’s
Square, saving the distressed from the rigours of the
open street, rescuing the needy from their tightest
corners, keeping many a home together when but for
him it would have fallen to pieces—­always
smiling, jolly, sympathetic, and picturesque—­Denry
at length employed the five-pound note won from Harold
Etches. A five-pound note—­ especially
a new and crisp one, as this was—­is a miraculous
fragment of matter, wonderful in the pleasure which
the sight of it gives, even to millionaires; but perhaps
no five-pound note was ever so miraculous as Denry’s.
Ten per cent. per week, compound interest, mounts up;
it ascends, and it lifts. Denry never talked
precisely. But the town soon began to comprehend
that he was a rising man, a man to watch. The
town admitted that, so far, he had lived up to his
reputation as a dancer with countesses. The town
felt that there was something indefinable about Denry.

Denry himself felt this. He did not consider
himself clever or brilliant. But he considered
himself peculiarly gifted. He considered himself
different from other men. His thoughts would run:

“Anybody but me would have knuckled down to
Duncalf and remained a shorthand clerk for ever.”

“Who but me would have had the idea of going
to the ball and asking the Countess to dance?...
And then that business with the fan!”

“Who but me would have had the idea of taking
his rent-collecting off Duncalf?”

“Who but me would have had the idea of combining
these loans with the rent-collecting? It’s
simple enough! It’s just what they want!
And yet nobody ever thought of it till I thought of
it!”

And he knew of a surety that he was that most admired
type in the bustling, industrial provinces—­a
card.

IV

The desire to become a member of the Sports Club revived
in his breast. And yet, celebrity though he was,
rising though he was, he secretly regarded the Sports
Club at Hillport as being really a bit above him.
The Sports Club was the latest and greatest phenomenon
of social life in Bursley, and it was emphatically
the club to which it behoved the golden youth of the
town to belong. To Denry’s generation the
Conservative Club and the Liberal Club did not seem
like real clubs; they were machinery for politics,
and membership carried nearly no distinction with it.
But the Sports Club had been founded by the most dashing
young men of Hillport, which is the most aristocratic
suburb of Bursley and set on a lofty eminence.
The sons of the wealthiest earthenware manufacturers
made a point of belonging to it, and, after a period
of disdain, their fathers also made a point of belonging
to it. It was housed in an old mansion, with
extensive grounds and a pond and tennis courts; it
had a working agreement with the Golf Club and with
the Hillport Cricket Club. But chiefly it was
a social affair. The correctest thing was to be
seen there at nights, rather late than early; and
an exact knowledge of card games and billiards was
worth more in it than prowess on the field.